Abstract:
Television provides variety of cherished programmes and valuable content which serve the
purpose of education, information, relaxation and entertainment; and has become an integral and
vital medium today. Television stations sell out product to audience in a form of programmes.
One of the popular programmes on television today in Ghana is telenovelas. Programme
managers plan programmes that best attract viewers. Private television stations generate revenue
exclusively by selling air time for advertisement. The value of air time depends on the number of
viewers the station have (Perino and Schulze, 2003).
Television stations can only achieve this objective only when their programmes attract maximum
viewership. This study assessed the impact telenovelas have on television viewership;
particularly it examined the impact of the telecast of telenovelas on UTV viewership.
The study used quantitative research design that surveyed 100 traders at Kumasi central market.
Self-administered questionnaires were used to gather data for the study. All 100 questionnaires
were used for the analysis. The results show that majority of the respondents enjoy watching
UTV’s telenovelas but this is only a contributing factor to their market share. There is another
contributing factor which is the language of broadcast. Most of the respondents’ survey
confirmed they watch UTV because of their language of broadcast. Also many of them said they
will continue watching UTV even in the absence of telenovelas. Looking at these results, it
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means that the market share and popularity of UTV does not solely depend on the telenovelas
they telecast.
